Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to monitoring systems and devices of such a system. In particular the invention relates to a method for connecting a monitoring device to a service server and to a monitoring system enabling such connection.
Description of the Related Art
Monitoring systems for monitoring of premises, areas of particular interest and/or processes connected via a computer network to monitoring or surveillance servers are increasingly popular, in particular such monitoring systems including digital monitoring cameras. One reason for the popularity of such systems may be that the systems in great extent may utilize an existing network, if a computer network already is in place.
Another reason for using a general computer network as a surveillance network may be that the network that has to be built for the monitoring system may be used to connect other types of equipment, e.g. computers, servers and peripherals. For these reasons the technology suits organizations/persons in need of only a single or few monitoring devices as well as organizations/persons in need of a great number of monitoring devices.
In one such monitoring system the monitoring devices are arranged to send their monitoring data to a service server which processes the monitoring data or information in order to prepare the data for access to monitoring data by a user, for logging monitoring information, for storing monitoring data, or for other purposes known to a person skilled in the art of monitoring systems.
In general the monitoring devices of such system are manufactured by one company and the service server is maintained by a monitoring service provider, being another company. The monitoring service provider may be a company or organization specialized in providing such services. The monitoring service provider may, however, also be a company related to the monitored premises, areas and/or processes, i.e. the company owning or operating at the monitored sites. In the systems of today each monitoring device may be provided with the address to a service server by the user keying the address directly into the monitoring device. Another method for achieving a connection between the monitoring device and a service server is to connect to the service server via a computer connected to the computer network and register the monitoring device at the service server.
Today, such programming of an address to a service provider or registration of a monitoring device in a service server is performed by the user of or a person installing the monitoring device during the process of installing the monitoring device.
Some general problems associated with the above described monitoring systems are that the person performing the installation may not be experienced in programming monitoring devices, the programming may be time consuming, the person may enter erroneous data into the monitoring device.